How industrial wind turbine blades are made

You may have wondered how the massive industrial grade wind turbines are created and shipped. In this article we'll explore the blades made at the Molded Fiber Glass Company in Texas. These blades are made of fiberglass and are shaped similar to an aircraft wing. They are then coated with epoxy to protect them from the elements and hold the form. The epoxy in the fiberglass has to have hardened for the blades to be able to be removed from their mandrels and painted, like those you see in these pictures. However, the epoxy is not fully cured and the blades are relatively soft. That is why all of these blades are stored in rows outside.

So they are stored in fixtures like the one I am standing by to hold their shape while a few weeks in the hot Texas sun finishes the curing process. It isn't done to save energy, it's just very expensive to build an industrial curing oven that holds blades this big, much less a whole lot of them.

Remember, these are merely the turbine blades. The turbines that hold these blades are built elsewhere. (See the wind turbine fastening bolts in the attached photo). Then imagine the size of the towers that hold both the blades and the turbines up high enough to harness the industrial strength wind.